Super Bowl most watched TV event ever; also a giant draw in S.A.

It may have been a dud of a game, but this year’s Super Bowl on Fox still drew an audience of 111.5 million viewers, making it the most-watched TV event in U.S. history.

According to Nielsen, Sunday night’s telecast of Super Bowl XLVIII, the first “cold weather” NFL Championship game in which the Seattle Seahawks trounced the Denver Broncos 43-8, was viewed in more than 53 million homes. The draw of those big-dollar commercials and the fabulous Bruno Mars-Red Hot Chili Peppers half-time show didn’t hurt either.

Nielsen reported Monday that the telecast broke a viewership record set by the Super Bowl two years ago between the New York Giants and New England Patriots.

It certainly outshone last year’s match-up on CBS that attracted 108.6 million viewers.

In San Antonio, the game also gave Fox affiliate KABB a mammoth boost. The station reports that the game was watched by nearly half-a-million households (402,353 to be exact) here, drawing a 44.4 Rating and 66 share.

However, many preferred tea and crumpets over nachos and beer Sunday night, making “Downton Abbey,” for a third year in a row, the second most-watched telecast of the night. According to numbers shared by PBS and Masterpiece, the 8 p.m. show averaged 6.8 million viewers. It was up 3 percent from the 6.6 million who tuned in against the Super Bowl in 2013.